Lately, I have been humming the Rolling Stones classic, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” In the chorus, they say “…but if you try sometime you’ll find, you get what you need.” I feel that way about my recent adoption of a second dog.
For years, I searched for a dog who would be compatible with G. I thought a female terrier, about a year old, would be perfect.
What kind of dog did I ultimately adopt? A three-year old male Shih-Tzu who is great with her. He doesn’t mind yielding to a strong alpha female (G, of course). He patiently waits for her whenever she needs to stop during walkies. He is happy to play with toys on his own if she refuses to play with him but never stops bringing her a toy, just in case she changes her mind. His attitude and energy works perfectly with her. A terrier never worked because that’s what I wanted, not what G needed.
There is a lesson here. We have pre-conceived notions about everything. We think we know what we want or need. Sometimes, the thing we want is not the thing we need. We should open our minds to new ideas, new opportunities. What looks like something that wouldn’t be right (in my case, a male Shih-Tzu) may be exactly what we needed all along.